'Medieval' Italian guard names

[admin]

Maybe it would be interesting and useful to document the Italian fencing guard names in treatises that either pre-date the 'rapierish' method of numbering guards, or that also include the old (ie. medieval) types of Italian guard names. Also to plot them geographically.

Here is what I have off the top of my head (please add to it if you can, listing which places the master was associated with and which pre-numbered guard names they use):

Fiore (1410) - Udine/Milan/Ferrara
Porta di Ferro (let's not list the variations!), Posta di Coda Longa et Distese, Posta di Denti di Cinghiale, Posta Breve, Posta Longa, Posta di Bicorno, Posta di Frontale/Corona, Posta di Finestra, Posta di Donna (and variations), Posta Breve la Serpentina, Posta di Vera Croce, Posta Serpentino la Soprano, Posta Sagittaria, Posta di Croce Bastarda

Vadi (1485ish) - Pisa/Urbino
Porta di Ferro, Posta di Donna, Posta di Falcone, Posta Breve, Posta Sagittaria, Posta di Vera Finestra, Posta di Corona, Posta di Denti di Cinghiale, Posta Longa, Posta Frontale, Posta di Croce, Posta Serpentina, Posta Serpentina Soprano, Posta di Leopardo.

Manciolino (1531) - Bologna
Guardia di Alta, Guardia di Testa, Guardia di Faccia, Guardia di Sopra Braccio, Guardia di Sotto Braccio, Guardia Porta di Ferro, Guardia Cinghiale Porta di Ferro, Guardia di Coda Longa (and variations). Others?

Marozzo (1536) - Bologna
Guards?

Anonimous (1520-50ish) - Bologna
Guards?

Viggiani (1550/1575) - Bologna
Guards?

Giacomo di Grassi (1570) - Modena?
Guardia Alta, Guardia Largha, Guardia Bassa

Dall'Aggocchie (1572) - Bologna
Guards?

Riccardiano?

Ghisliero?

Alfieri's spadone guards?

[Piermarco]

I've had a go at filling in the blanks, there are other known masters of course but this post is long enough . I've added Altoni as he mentions some of the earlier guards and was referred to in the other thread.

Manciolino (1531) - Bologna
Also mentions in passing guardia di alicorno.


Marozzo (1536) - Bologna
Coda lunga (and variations), porta di ferro (and variations), chinghiara porta di ferro (and variations), guardia di testa, guardia di faccia, guardia d'intrare (variants in spadone), guardia di sopra braccio, guardia di sotto braccio, guardia alta, becha posa, becha cesa.

Additional spadone guards: guardia di fianco, guardia di croce, guardia di gombito, guardia contra armi inhastate.


Anonimous (1520-50ish) - Bologna
Coda lunga (and variations), porta di ferro (and variations), chinghiara porta di ferro (and variations), guardia di testa, guardia di faccia, guardia d'entrare, guardia di sopra braccio, guardia di sotto braccio, guardia alta, guardia di lioncorno/leoncorno.


Altoni (1540ish) – Florence

Altoni divides his guards into left, middle and right as well as high, middle and low - for a total of nine combinations. He then also has a "Guardia di Unicorno", which is directly analogous to the Bolognese Guards of a similar name, and left foot forward variants for all of the above (he terms a left foot forward guard an "assalto"):

Guardia sinistra alta, guardia di mezzo alta, guardia destra alta, guardia sinistra mezzana, guardia di mezzo mezzana, guardia destra mezzana, guardia sinistra bassa, guardia di mezzo bassa, guardia destra bassa, guardia di unicorno + left foot forward versions of all of the above.

He also mentions three other guards which are not part of his core scheme, giving every impression of being borrowings from other systems, for a total of 23:

Posta sagittaria, guardia chinghiara, guardia della volpe.

Additionally Altoni says that his mid-height guard is commonly known as guardia di fortezza or porta di ferro (applying this to all of the mid-height guards in contrast to the Bolognese school), and gives the left foot forward versions the alternative name “assalto del leone”.


Viggiani (1550/1575) - Bologna

Difensiva imperfetta, alta offensiva perfetta, alta offensiva imperfetta, larga difensiva imperfetta, stretta difensiva perfetta, larga offensiva imperfetta, stretta offensiva perfetta.


Dall'Aggocchie (1572) - Bologna

Coda lunga (and variations), porta di ferro (and variations), chingiale porta di ferro (and variations), guardia di testa, guardia di faccia, guardia d'entrare, guardia di sopra braccio, guardia di sotto braccio, guardia alta, guardia di alicorno.


Riccardiano (1550/1575) – Tuscany, possibly Florence.

Single hander: Prima guardia, seconda guardia (note this are not the same as Agrippa's prima and seconda), porta di ferro, guardia di falcone, guardia di seconda bassa, falcone di seconda guardia, guardia bastarda (Battistini and Venni interpret the guardia bastarda as analogous to Silver's bastard guardant ward, maybe ol' George was a closet italophile all along ).

Two hander: Guardia bassa, guardia di piè dritto, guardia di piè zanco.


Ghisliero (1587) - Bologna

Prima, seconda, terza, quarta (as per Agrippa), also mentioning guardia di faccia, guardia di testa and guardia di falcone.

Note Capoferro (1610) also mentions guardia di faccia and guardia di testa.


Alfieri's spadone guards (1653) Alfieri seems to go into naming moves more than than guards for the spadone, he has a posture he calls “guarda faccia”, then he has moves like “spazza campagna” and “la biscia”.

[admin]

Thanks Pim, this is brilliant.

I was surprised to see how many of the Italians had a Unicorn Guard, which at least linguistically (if not in execution) ties in with the Unicorn Guard found in German sources and probably therefore breaks the proposed (by some) relationship between the German Unicorn and Fiore's Bicorno (IMO).

I sense a kind of division in the 'mainstream' Bolognese guard names, between those that are almost alegorical (like Porta di Ferro and Cinghiale) and those that are more literal and descriptive (like Guardia di Faccia, Guardia di Sopra Braccio etc). I wonder if what we see there are a mixing of older and newer names for positions, or the merging of two originally distinct traditions. There certainly seem to be some melding going on there, prior to or during Manciolino and Marozzo's generation. That we can find some of the Bolognese guard names in Fiore and Vadi makes me think that those are the older names and that the more descriptive Bolognese names are later (which would fit in a more 'scientific' age, when guards eventually became known only by numbers).

I wonder why the older names were retained in the Bolognese traditions generally for low guards, whilst the higher guards generally got 'new' (or different) names...

Interesting that the extra guards Altoni mentions all have the 'old' type of name (whereas his other guards seem more descriptive and literal), and these include a Guard of the Vixen (Volpe) - not a name I have heard elsewhere.

Viggiani, to me, seems to have been very much his own man - his treatise, including the guard names, seems pretty different to everyone else. I actually see Viggiani as having the most in common with Fiore's plays of the one-handed sword.

I'm not sure what to make of Riccardiano's selection of guard names - they seem a bit like the typical Bolognese mixture of 'old' and 'literal', but they are a different selection than the Bolognese selection. The way they became mixed may have been similar though. I guess this is perhaps not surprising if he was from a Florentine tradition, because we know there was a lot going on there (in fencing terms) and it was undoubtedly along different though parallel lines to what was going on in Bologna. Just less accessable to us, because of the lack of sources.

From looking at the selections above I imagine a process whereby the various medieval lineages in Italy were for the most part using the same or similar sets of guard names, based around images like the Iron Door, Boar's Tooth, Window, Lady, Leopard, Falcon etc.. then at some point various of these lineages started implementing more scientific descriptive names, like 'Guard of the Face', 'Guard of the Head', 'Guard of Entering' etc. Then at a still later point (pushed by Agrippa's popularity perhaps) people started numbering guards and in various places and various times these three different methods of naming the guards all mixed together, to different degrees and in different selections. It's what it looks like on the surface at least.
Would you agree?

As a medievalist what I find most interesting is that there are hints of other medieval Italian traditions there, if my theory is correct. The Unicorn, Falcon, Vixen and Leopard guards must have come from somewhere and that somewhere was outside of what Fiore shows.

[Joeli]

Good thread! I don't have a contribution, but I approach the fellow scholars with a question - whatabout Monte in his 1509 book? Where would he fall in, Italian or Iberian tradition?

[admin]

I don't think we really know what martial traditions he was part of do we? I'm not even aware of any guard names he uses - does he give any?

[Piermarco]

Thanks Matt, I think you've done a good analysis, there must have been other stuff going on, some kind of cross-pollination seems to be happening, but we are missing several pieces of the jigsaw. In terms of descriptive guard names I.33 does has a sub brachium and a super brachium, but with the evidence we've got we can only guess whether there is any relation to the Bolognese school or just parallel development of fairly logical guard names. In general however the abstract guard names do seem to have a more medieval feel.

I do like Altoni. His system of guards is very logical and systematic, but then he mentions these more exotic sounding guards, it certainly hints at a richer picture. He doesn't really describe guardia della volpe, it's tempting to associate this with say a code lunga e distesa, on the grounds that a fox's defining characteristic is its tail, but this is pure speculation.

Viggiani is an interesting case because his method is quite different to the other Bolognese authors and he changes the guard names, but the positions themselves have direct analogies in the previous treatises. There must have been some mileage in Viggiani though because Torquato D'Alessandri uses Viggiani's terminology as late as 1609. D'Alessandri published and practiced in Rome not Bologna, and says he is only 23 in his treatise, so not a veteran diehard clinging to the old ways.

The Riccardiano does seem all on its own, but even so he includes porta di ferro, as well as the falcone which occurs elsewhere.

Regarding Monte (1509) AFAIK his guards are a "prima" high on the right side and a "seconda" on the left side, which he says rests on the left shoulder, "particularly when you have a shield". This basic scheme of "first guard" to the right and "second guard" to the left (although not on the shoulder) is found in the Riccardiano and also in Lovino (1570), but again we can't really draw any direct relationship between the three treatises, since this is a fairly logical approach to naming a first and second guard (if different to Agrippa's).

Hopefully the new text that has been been found will gives us some insights we didn't have before, even just knowing what region it is from should tell us something

[tim_stl]

Also regarding Monte, the old Iberian tradition (as far as we know) had very simple guards, if any. According to Pacheco, Pons (Perpiñan, 1474) had only two (one high and one low), and de la Torre (Seville, 1474) reluctantly spoke of four (one at each shoulder and hip).


Tim

[Michael Chidester]

I was surprised to see how many of the Italians had a Unicorn Guard, which at least linguistically (if not in execution) ties in with the Unicorn Guard found in German sources and probably therefore breaks the proposed (by some) relationship between the German Unicorn and Fiore's Bicorno (IMO).

There are actually two distinct positions identified as unicorn in German sources (Einhorn and Einkirin). Not sure which if either of these corresponds to the Italianated version.

[Piermarco]

The Italian 'unicorn' guard is basically like a rapier prima, or Marozzo's becca cesa/posa, i.e. hand up with the point forward and slightly downwards.

[Sean M]

Would it be worth distinguishing between the guards that a master uses and the ones they mention, or the ones they name and the ones they describe? Di Grassi mentions many guards without naming them in the second and third parts of his book, and Dall'Agocchie only uses five guard names (CL, PdiF, Intrare, Faccia, Alicorno with CL and PdF subdivided according to which foot is forward) but he describes the others at the start of his book to show that he knows them. If he taught spada di giocco, but chose not to write about it, he may have used those other guards.

[admin]

Here is the one-page list of (probably sword and buckler) guards, found by Brian Stokes:

http://www.scholasanmarco.com/hec-sunt- ... licet.html

The text transcribed by Brian is:

Si magister in cauda lunga, disspulus
in cruce / Si magister in alto, dissipulus
in stoccho / Si magister in spatula si-
nistra, dissipulus in destra. / Si
magister in guardia falconis, dissi
pulus in sub ascella / Si magister
ad med[um] pectus, dissipulus
in plana. / Si magister (in) sub ascella,
dissiplus in socca. / Si Magister
in plana, Dissipulus in sangia[?*].
Si magister in cruce, dissipulus
in spatula sinistra. [hic]

* I have changed Brian’s transcription at this point, because his transcription says ‘senestra’, but the translation says ‘sangia’, which I believe it the correct transcription (also looking at the scan).

This source seems to date to before 1434 and may be Florentine.

Of these, the guards we have heard of before in other treatises:
- Coda Longa
- Alta
- Falcone

The guards that we know by similar or other names:
- 'Croce' – mentioned in various sources, but shown in assorted different positions.
- ‘Stoccho’ = Stoccata?
- ‘Spatula sinistra’ = Sopra-Braccia (over-arm)?
- ‘Destra’ (Spatula destra?) – over the right shoulder? Perhaps like Posta di Donna.
- 'Sub ascella' = Sotto-Braccia (under-arm)?
- 'Sangia' = Sanglier? (French for boar, ie. Cinghiale?)

Unidentified guards:
- Medum pectus – Middle of the chest, like Bichorno?
- Plana – Level? Or pointed to the floor?
- Socca – I cannot find any likely translation for this word in Florio 1611

[admin]

Looking at the scan, it could be ‘soga’? That’s a cable or rope.

[Thearos]

Ad medium pectus = with the hilt at the waist, but the point at chest hight ? Cf I. 33 "pectori da sextam", give the sixth ward to the chest

[Michael Chidester]

There's a discussion of possible meanings of the guard names here: http://www.swordforum.com/forums/showth ... 20research

[Piermarco]

Interesting that this source may be Tuscan and includes a "Falcone" guard, since both the Anonimo Riccardiano and Vadi have a guard of this name and are also from Tuscany (although Ghisliero is not).

Incidentally, to add to the list, the latest instance of a medieval guard name I can think of is from Pallavicini's 1673, which has a guard for the sword and dagger which he says is commonly referred to as "Porta di Ferro", although he says he prefers to call it "Porta di Fuora".

[admin]

Great stuff - the SFI thread is really useful, I hadn't seen it, so really nice to see a lot of the same linguistic conclusions being reached - so 'socco' is definitely the same as 'sotto', Pim?

How is Riccardiano's Falcone held again?

[Piermarco]

As a noun "socca" definitely seems to translate as "sottana", which (as a noun) actually means cassock or petticoat (deriving from the fact this is an undergarment) since as an adjective "sottano" was an archaic term for "from below" or "underneath".

I think it unlikely this was the "cassock guard" so at a guess I would think by extension "socca" could have arrived at via "posta socca" or something like that, but i'm happy to be corrected by a Latinist.

The Anonimo Riccardiano's Falcone is tricky, as it is never explicitly described, except to say that it is high, but Battistini and Venni who transcribed it infer that unlike Vadi it is point down, like a rapier prima.

[admin]

Interesting!
Incidentally, from looking at Florio is seems that words involving 'socca' at the beginning may give us the word 'sock' in English (as in the thing you wear inside shoes).
Given that this list has both 'alta' and 'falcone' I think it makes sense that they are significantly different somehow, such as for example one pointing up or back and the other pointing forwards. BUt of course this is all pure speculation.

[Lyceum]

Well our word sock derives from Anglo Saxon /socc/ itself from late Latin /soccus/. Italian would be unsuitable due to how it handles gemminated palatial consonants throughout most of its history. The Latin word itself may be from a Germanic (west Germanic?) borrowing for "slipper", though I doubt it due to the phonological changes in each language.

This thread is interesting; has anybody tried to put forth a theory for HOW the guards are named based on assembled evidence? e.g what is the reasoning behind guard names?

I seem to remember people are still arguing over the meaning di donna, for example, and how the woman plays her part. Some seem really obvious (corona, longa, breve, serpente etc) but others...

[admin]

These images from late-14thC/early-15thC manuscripts are relevant...